23-year-old Nichola Kratka, a self-described ‘extreme eater’, deliberately ate a fish infested with tapeworms and filmed himself doing it in the hopes of going viral on TikTok.

It’s shocking what some people will do for a bit of online attention these days. Take this young Florida content creator who, after catching a tapeworm-infested bass while fishing on a lake. Instead of throwing away the fish after discovering the parasites, he decided to eat it, knowing full well that he could become infected. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t long until he started experiencing side effects like stomach aches, diarrhea, nausea, siziness, and weakness. In the end, he had to seek medical help and start taking deworming medication. Still, Kratka said he had “no regrets”…

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A Brazilian doctor recently shocked millions on social media by posting an X-ray of a man suffering from cysticercosis whose body was riddled with calcified tapeworm eggs.

Last month, Doctor Vitor Borin de Souza, a resident at the Hospital das Clínicas in Botucatu, Sao Paulo, posted an X-ray of a patient on Twitter to show his followers how bad a tapeworm infection could get. The doctor explained that the white spots visible all through his midsection and his arms were calcified tapeworm eggs following infection with the common intestinal parasite. Luckily, the patient, who had come in for a checkup following a persistent cough, was in no danger from the eggs, as they were all calcified (unviable). Although the tapeworm eggs (cysticerci) posed no threat to the man’s health, they caused quite the stir on Brazilian social media.

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